Achieve Ultimate Human Performance

Lesson 21 of 33

Digestion 101

Achieve Ultimate Human Performance

Lesson 21 of 33

Digestion 101

Lesson Info

Digestion 101

Achieving ultimate human performance is what we're talking about and one big part of that is achieving ultimate performance of your gut because remember when we define ultimate human performance yesterday what I said was that one of the ways that I personally think of it is the ideal combination of performance that loss recovery, digestion, brain sleep and hormone optimization and a big big part of that is your gut that's the whole digestion component and an inter place quite a bit with the other components to and when I think of whether or not the digestive system is achieving ultimate performance, I asked whether or not the digestive system is providing immunity and processing and absorbing nutrients with optimum efficiency. Those are the two main things that we want our digestive system to be able to do and if we can achieve that using some of the things that you're gonna learn today, then we're going to be in a really good place in terms of the way the body feels and the way that t...

he hormones are produced nor transmitters are producing all the cool things that happened in your digestive tract but we're going to start with digestion one o one and go over some of the little concepts in terms that I'll be throwing around during much of the talk today so of course here is your digestive system and here is your digestive system digestion starts in your mouth with these two glands that air in your mouth we're going to learn about how your body begins to initiate things like carbohydrate digestion, carbohydrate breakdown at that point then his food travels down it's going to go into your stomach, your small intestine and your large intestine and travel down about nine meters or so worth of tubes before it comes out the other side and of course the other elements of digestion that we'll be covering today of chris your liver that's a very, very important component of your got your digestion we'll be covering your pancreas, which turns out some really important hormones we touched earlier on your gall bladder and its production of bildt to helpyou multi file those healthy fats that we've been talking about today and during the course of this session we're going to have to learn how to optimize all of those different components of your digestive system. So grey's anatomy defines the digestive system as a muscular au member anus to about thirty feet in length. I was close with nine meters extending from the mouth to the anus and line throughout its entire extent by a mucous membrane it's really important that you understand that concept that being lined with this mucous membrane because it's only really a very small single cell layer of thickness in many cases between your body and the external environment that that you're experiencing in your gut and so this muscular member anus meme tube and its integrity is super duper important it's why I've been dozing with high high dose l glued aiming a week because as a referred to a few times I got knocked out with a really bad bacteria last week and I've had to heal my stomach and heal my tummy and hell that muscular member anus lining and you know l gouda mean is one of the things that you'll learn about today but it's among a variety of ways that you can fix ah gut that's broken but like I mentioned and show to you you know with with our with our glands appear in the mouth digestion begins in your mouth and this means that if you're going to begin digestion in your mouth you need to think about chewing I talked about aging athletes and chewing earlier but this is something that's really important is for you to understand that all of these amul aces are created in your mouth and that's where you begin to digest food that's why in our first session of the day when I told you how to make a smoothie, we talked about how to make the smoothie chunky you should chew your smoothy even if you're drinking something like that to help you initiate digestion in your mouth because your mouth has these clans that produce ends I'm saying with juicing if you do use the food, you should work it around in your mouth, switched it a few times you get really good absorption and better digestion when you do something like that I used to tell me to drink my solids and chew my liquids she would always say to us, yeah that's that's kind of interesting I don't know about the drink, your solids part I got enough that you can actually go chewing chewing your solids enough to where you could drink yeah, I love it. Ok, cool so yeah, that's, that's really, really great and we tend to eat really, really fast, but chewing twenty to thirty times, you know, especially if you're one of those aging athletes I was talking about in the last session is really important, but for anybody chewing is incredibly important because that enzymatic digestion begins in our mouth. So thie other kind of cool thing, by the way, that I that I didn't mention that last light for athletes is many times you can take something like just the law little bit of like a like a drink or when it is little gummy, choose or something like that and rather than eating the whole package or using the whole thing while you're out running a marathon and traffic on if you just put a little bit in your mouth the enzymes in your mouth helped to digest that and release just a little bit of sugar into the bloodstream and like this thermostat that tells the brain that it's got just enough glucose around to where it doesn't need to bonk or it can achieve a higher rating of perceived exertion as kind of like this little trick that you can use almost like that bio hacking mouthpiece that I showed earlier very similar idea because your body is able to absorb some of those things in the mouth so it's really interesting now food also before gets your stomach because traveled to your soft against the esophagus is a muscle it secretes a lot of these al colleen compounds and if you have low stomach acid this is where a lot of asthma and gastroesophageal reflux disease and heartburn starts is in your esophagus. So when you take something like nexium which is a proton pump inhibitor on which inhibits a lot of the hydrochloric acid in the ability of your body to break down a lot of foods many, many times what that does interferes with the secretion of the alkaline compounds in your esophagus and it can really start there and we'll talk later on about some of the issues that creates downstream and also where heartburn really comes from later on in this session but it's important to understand that the health of even your esophagus is really important now food is going to wind up from your soft against going down into your stomach and it's going to mix with enzymes there to create kind. Now I talked about in the last session, how your stomach has eight she'll present in it or hydrochloric acid. Hydrochloric acid is what activates pepsi and pepsi is the enzyme that's responsible for digesting protein. So if you have inadequate hydrochloric acid, if you're taking an acid inhibitor or nexium or something like that to inhibit hydrochloric acid, you're going to shut down your ability to digest proteins because that protein digestive enzymes activated by hcl so we get low hcl we'd only get low protein digestion and low amino acid availability for the formation of things like neuro transmitters and muscle repair, but we also get undigested food particles, large protein fragments winding up in the small intestine, and a lot of times that can create autoimmune issues as well. So already five minutes into this presentation, probably getting a pretty good idea that I'm not a fan of shutting down your body's natural hydrochloric acid production and also one of the places where if you deal with auto immune issues or if you deal with protein availability or amino acid availability issues, one of things that you can look at is whether or not you're actually sick, creating enough hydrochloric acid and there are tests out there that that will test you for hydrochloric acid secretion after food finishes in you islamic it's going to pass into your small intestine and food passing into your small intestine stimulus production of two different hormones accreting on what's called cola, cystic einen or cck that signals your stomach to moderate contractions, which makes you feel full, and it also causes these digestive and hormonal secretions from your pancreas and your gall bladder. And then you absorb a lot of your nutrients via these little bumps via these live ville ii on your membrane wall. So if those ville ii are damaged by something like a high fiber compound, or if they are in flamed by you consuming a food that irritates the ville ii and the intestinal wall, something like glee adan from the gluten portion of wheat is a perfect example. Aa lot of times you don't get nutrient absorption via these ville ii. You also don't get those ville I producing a lot of the enzymes that are responsible for digesting other compounds such as lack toast, for example so many times someone who is lack toast intolerant. If the hell those ville ii by doing something like eliminating wheat or eliminating gluten from their diet, they can all of a sudden begin to digest dairy and begin to digest lactose foods again, so it's really interesting how if you've been, if you damage that bill I and then you feel it, you can consume foods that maybe you weren't able to consume before. So it's really, really interesting, like I personally received a ton of wheat and dairy would destroy me. And now that I've stopped putin and stopped wheat and heal my god, I can do things like, you know, raw organic dairy in and do just fine. So, um, food is going to pass from your small intestine into your large intestine. We talked a little bit about the large intestine before and how in some animals, like gorillas and cows and to a smaller extent, humans, the large intestine is going to take fibers and convert those into short chain fatty acids that can be used as fuel. The large intestine, of course, is is our colon, where we're going to store waste things, air decomposed with bacteria, we re absorb a lot of water and electrolytes. We absorb a lot of the vitamins that created by bacteria in our large intestine, which is why poor kalanick health can actually cause vitamin depletion like I mentioned, we break fiber down to fatty acids, and we also create antibodies in our large intestine. So food can pass through in in as fast as sixty eight hours, but it could take twenty four to seventy two hours to get through, depending on depending on how healthy your large intestine is and I'll talk about some of the things that you can do to heal your large intestine if you tend tio kind of have issues there, but one of the first kind of hacks I want to get into from a digestive standpoint when we're talking about the large intestine is a component of it called your pube oh wrecked alice muscle and this is your anal rectal angle right here this is what it looks like when you're sitting down and this is what it looks like when you are squatting now this is one of the biggest issues when it comes to the health of people's large intestine and the health of people's colon. I can't talk about the large intestine or the corn without talking about our typical western habit of sitting down in that shortened hip flexor position on a typical toilet, which kinks this ain't a rectal angle and actually causes things like constipation straining hemorrhoids and basically really, really kind of incomplete pooping this is where something like a squatty potty comes in. This is one of my favorite little home tools that all used to keep my pupil wrecked alice muscle lengthen and to keep that an erectile angle exactly where it's supposed to be it's a lot easier than getting a shovel and heading out in the backyard to dig a hole but the way this goes is you actually sit right here and you would imagine your toilet being right there and this actually allows you to get up into a squatting position and then you simply get down just like this when it's time to take a dump and this completely empties your colon and empties your large intestine the way that it's supposed to empty now you detect if they achieve the same effect by getting a couple of toddler stools or books or something like that and I've even airports before literally perched on top of the actual toilet bowl itself. But these squatty potty is just make things far more convenient. I think the plastic model cost something like twenty or thirty bucks they make kind of a fashionable bamboo model I've got a whole article on squatty potty is over a ben greenfield fitness dot com, but this is a really cool tool to actually maintain the health of your colon or your large intestine. And for me personally, uh, it makes a huge difference in the morning in terms of how long I'm on the toilet when I have my squatty potty versus when I don't so that's a squatty potty definitely something to add into your digestive health protocol so let's talk a little bit about carbs, about protein and about fat so first of all in terms of digestion of carbs like I mentioned carved digestion begins in your mouth and it completes in your small intestine you khun burn glucose instantly for energy straight out of your mouth which is why I mentioned that you could do something like put a little energy chu or something like that and your mouth during iran and it'll provide your brain with that little surge of glucose but if it's not burnt for energy immediately glucose gets converted into what's called storage carbohydrate or glycogen and your liver and in your muscles your liver stores about one hundred grams of glycogen and your muscles store about two hundred fifty to four hundred grams of glycogen liver glycogen supplies energy for your entire body muscle glycogen only supplies energy to your muscles so here's something that's important to realize if you eat too much carbohydrate and you have excess glucose and all of your glycogen stores are full then glucose gets converted into fat by the liver which is why foods that are advertised as fat free or not truly fat free because your liver that part of your digestive system is very, very efficient at converting sugars into fats. Now if your liver's glycogen levels our full fruit toast can get very readily converted into fatty acids since your muscles can't store fruit toast as glycogen and this returns to one of the reasons why I say that I only eat about the equivalent of a piece of fresh raw fruit about once every two days or so, because it's very, very easy if you have full liver glycogen levels for your body to convert fructose into fatty acids and for for fruit to essentially make you fat. So especially if you're getting adequate calories from other sources, you do need to be very careful with fruit toast consumption, but essentially that's kind of how carbohydrates gets stored and burnt and that's kind of the overview of how carbohydrates work in terms your body now digestion of proteins a little bit different. Andi, what happens with proteins is they're broken down into what are called amino acids, and this is where auto immunity or where immune system reactions against protein content to be kind of an issue. So what happens with an autoimmune reaction with the food allergy is your body's immune system identifies a protein as harmful, and some proteins or fragments of proteins that are not broken down in the digestive process. For example, if you've in completely digested proteins in your stomach, do do not producing enough hydrochloric acid, or, for example, you don't have enough digestive enzymes present. Aa lot of those undigested protein fragments get tagged by your immune system. Those tags fool the immune system and thinking the protein is harmful and that triggers an allergic reaction and you get things like brain fog. You get things like the sniffles you get things like feeling sleepy after you consume a protein that you might be allergic to, and those are some of the issues when it comes to protein and kind of how this auto immune reaction actually occurs. It is one of the reasons that, for example, the glee odd and portion of of gluten that protein and wheat can cause an autoimmune reaction some people mountain auto, immune reaction, it's eggs, some people in autumn in reaction against way I'll tell you in a little bit a test that you can do to see what protein fragments you might mount an autoimmune reaction against but sometimes it's not necessarily because you are allergic to those proteins it's because you've been completely digested them and it's more of a hydrochloric acid or a digestive enzyme issue and less of an auto immune issue per se and then finally fats digestion of fats actually begins in your mouth. Those same glands in your mouth can produce light paises, which help me to digest fats. Most of the digestion of fats is in your small intestine requires bile from your liver, your gall bladder which is why if you have gall bladder issues using something like an ox bile supplement could help out quite a bit with digestion and your body forms what are called my cells from the fatty acids and these air absorbed in your intestine and they're joined with protein and they enter your body as lipoproteins or cholesterol. Now some forms of fats don't even go through that process they get just get shoved straight into yourselves for use a za fuel medium change friendless rides like oil that's a perfect example of the fat that can bypass that liver and just go straight into metabolizing so that's an example of why something like that work so well for like athletes were using fats of fuel during exercise so we've talked a little bit about cholesterol and the benefits of cholesterol, but I mentioned earlier that there's no evidence that high consumption of of saturated fats can cause heart disease especially the absence of other issues such as sugar. So I want to give you guys an idea of all the different benefits of cholesterol there's so many of them that I actually write a bunch room down so cholesterol gives yourself stiffness and stability so if you have a really really poor diet high and vegetable oil and low in saturated fat sometimes you see a huge rise in cholesterol as your body turns up took extra cholesterol to give yourselves structural cholesterol is a precursor to cortical steroids and hormones it's a precursor to vitamin d which is why like I mentioned earlier if you are using the sunlight to increase your vitamin d and you go out into the sun but you have low cholesterol levels you actually can increase your vitamin d you have to have that combination of high cholesterol and sunlight exposure to increase vitamin d bio assaults are made from cholesterol so the bile that your liver churns out to help you digest fat is made up of cholesterol which is why a lot of times if you've been eating a low fat diet and you switched to a high fat diet you experience a lot of digestive issues just because your gall bladder actually doesn't even have enough cholesterol to make the bile that it means so that's why it's really important like I mentioned I think in response to a question earlier that sometimes when you startinto a high fat diet he need to do things like use light paces in some case use like a bio supplement to help your body along cholesterol is an anti oxidant ironically, it helps to protect you against the free radical damage that can lead to heart disease into cancer. So even though a lot of people blame cholesterol for heart disease, it can actually I'll protect you against heart disease it's needed for the proper function of serotonin receptors in your brain and so low cholesterol levels can lead to depressive like symptoms that can lead to low serotonin type of symptoms brain, fog and some of those other issues that we've talked about. We touched last time on the fat content of mother's milk and how it's fifty five to sixty percent fat it's very rich in cholesterol, and it contains a special enzyme in it that helps babies utilize cholesterol so babies and kids need very cholesterol rich foods, which is why we talked about this cheryl and kids needing higher fat intake and then dietary cholesterol plays a really important role and maintain the health of the intestinal wall and that's. Why a plant based diet that is low in cholesterol can actually, over the course of time cause leaky gut and cause of a lot of intestinal wall issues, you'll get a lot of people who switched like a plant based or vegetarian or vegan based diet, eventually complaining like crones like or silly act like symptoms and it's, because cholesterol has dropped so low that they're really not able to produce adequate, adequate membranes. Now you'll see this in other macro nutrient issues to carbohydrates, for example, you need a minimum of about four hundred calories or so of carbohydrates, either from proteins getting converted into carbohydrates or from dietary sources of carbohydrates to do things like form you can for mucus formed the lining of joints and so a lot of times like a very low carbohydrate diet you begin to get dry eyes sore joints some gut issues so it's not just fat that can protect your body in some of these cases carbohydrate is necessary as well but important that you know about some of those benefits of cholesterol and I always like to emphasize this because we tend to vilify cholesterol so much in our day and age it's very important for you to understand the role that cholesterol plays and digestion now the role of the liver it's got a lot of different roles destroys old red blood cells manufactures protein and blood clotting agents manufacturers cholesterol it stores carbohydrate as you learned earlier stores and fats and proteins converts fats and proteins to carbohydrates on and also like I talked about earlier it converts lactic acid during exercise into glucose it converts milk sugar into glucose it extracts ammonia from amino acids it converts it into furious you could get rid of it the gall bladder produces bile our stores by all of the liver produces the liver store spat soluble vitamins it converts at a post spat in the key tone bodies meaning can take your storage fat when you're dieting and produce those key tones that we talked about in the last session and it neutralizes pharmaceuticals and alcohol so the liver has a lot of important roles and this is one of the reasons why I really do encourage people to include organ means um and eat liver I eat liver about once every week or once every two weeks it's like I mentioned, I have a really simple liver recipe I take liver your soak it in either lemon juice or you soak it in milk which helps to kind of basically break it down a little bit make it a little bit more tender, making a little bit more flavorful and then you can dredge it an egg and then I'll pull it through coconut flour almond flour and then basically fry it in lard or fry it and butter there's a there's a bunch of different oils you can use and I'll serve that along with onions and bacon and it's actually one of the recipes that my wife says that I actually do better than her so going to claim that one that I do make a good liver so but that's one of the reasons why liver is really important to eat too now we've mentioned the gut brain connection and digestion is really important for your brain too I love this quote by jordan ruben on dh this guy actually owns that garden of life supplement company that talked about earlier that supplies like a vegan source of vitamin d three on dh what he says is early in our embryo genesis, a collection of tissue called the neural crest appears and divides during fetal development. One part turns into the central nervous system and the other migrates to become thean terek nervous system. Both of these thinking machines formed simultaneously and independently of one another until a later stage of development. And then these two nervous systems link through a cable called the vagus nerve, and we talked about the vagus nerve the other day and how important it is for your heart brain connection. It also forms your gut brain connection it waters from your brain, stem through the organs in your neck and thorax and terminates in your abdomen. And so that's your brain got connections who in the same way that your heart and your stress can cause changes in brain function. The gut can cause changes in brain function as well. A healthy gut can lead to improvements in mental development and in clarity of thought, and an unhealthy gut can lead to brain fog, depression, things of that nature. So here's an example of kind of the interplay between the brain and the gut and what's called the g b a or the gut brain axis, basically, when when we get stressed. In many cases, what happens is our gut kind of has this immune response that causes our brain to begin to shut down. I'm going to I'm going to actually go to the next slide because this explains a little bit earlier are a little a little bit better, but in terms of digestion and your brain, a lot of you guys have perhaps gotten butterflies in your stomach before a race or before, like going on stage, a lot of people are afraid of public speaking and things of that nature. One of the reasons for that is because as you get stressed out, your digestive system begins to shut down its because of that vagus nerve connection between your brain and your gut it's. Why you can get nervous or even get stomach cramps before a race for an important event like I mentioned it's, why antidepressants can cause nausea and stomach upset, because just in the same way that your gut produces neuro transmitters that help your brain if you take anti depressants that shut down neurotransmitter production in your brain, or overload your brain with neuro transmitters that in the same way can, through the vagus nerve, have an effect on got function. It's why overeating when you're anxious helps you produce extra feel good chemicals and it's why stress makes you want to eat more in many cases when you're supplying your body with foods or when you're eating mohr the chemicals that your body is producing is actually affecting your brain either decreasing stress or increasing neural transmitter production in your brain it's why food intolerances air g I inflammation can cause serious behavioral issues and kids and adults yesterday we brought up the gaps diet that gut and psychology syndrome diet and this is a special diet that eliminates common auto immune triggers like wheat and soy and dairy and things of that nature and especially in kids you tend to see almost an instant reversal of behavior issues when you cleaned up the diet you remove auto immune triggers because as the gut heels the brain actually starts to produce neuro transmitters the way that it's supposed to and that gut brain axis begins to behave in the way that it's supposed to it's also why an unhealthy gut can make you feel stupid or make you feel sluggish or give you brain fog eating foods that trigger an allergic response to trigger an immune response or having a gut that's damaged can really affect that neuro transmitter production the brain it's all related to from a very, very early stage in the embryo that link between our and terek and our central nervous system so the other important thing to realize about digestion is that three quarters of your immune system is in your digestive tract, so the health of your gut determines what nutrients are absorbed in what toxins, allergens and microbes air kept out here's that single cell layer between your actual inside body, your immune system in your bloodstream and everything else and your actual gut that mucus layer is very thin. You got the mucus layer here we've got a single cell barrier what are called epithelial cells here and if you have a leaky gut, if you've got holes in the in the gut lining if your mucosa lining is broken down because you've got low cholesterol, if there are large, un digested food fragments processing through here than what happened is a lot of this stuff winds up in your blood stream now that's. Why it's very very important to realize that if your gut is damaged, your immune system can become weakened very, very quickly because there's such a thing thin lining between your bloodstream and your external environment and your gut is really one of the biggest areas of your body in terms of your exposure to the environment. So a few things to realize when it comes to digestion and your immunity five hundred species and three pounds of bacteria in your gut forman ecosystem that helps you digest food, regulate hormones x st toxins have produced vitamins and other healing compounds that helped to keep your gut and your body healthy when we talk about consuming fermented foods sauerkraut kombu cha ki for things of that nature, we're not just doing that because those foods taste good or because they're nutrient dense we're also doing that to build up good bacteria in our gut and that bacteria in turn does things like produce vitamins on dh you actually can get vitamin and mineral on nutrient deficiencies from not having enough good bacteria in your gut in addition to you not producing a lot of the hormones and and the food digesting compounds that you need like I mentioned, your entire immune system is protected from your environment by aligning that is only one cell thick layer so if that barrier is damaged, you become allergic to foods that you may normally be able to digest just fine. Now this is why I'm not a fan of, for example, formula fed infants or fed to babies because like I mentioned mother's milk is very rich and kill ostrom kill ostrom helps tio seal up that single cell layer that I showed you a picture of between the blood and the and the gut, and if you don't get kill ostrom than that layer stays open and you wind up with the child later on life who's more susceptible to immune issues into allergic reaction so interestingly week even take this one step further you get kids who are born via for example so syrian section and they're not exposed to a lot of the healthy flora in the mother's vaginal tract as they as they're being born and so in many cases those type of kids tend to need help from a floral perspective and they need to take probiotics actually build up the healthy bacteria in their gut. So there's some really, really interesting issues that started a very, very early stage and if you go back and you find out for example you're born via c section and fed formula you might be somebody who needs to be on something like you know, kill ostrom and probiotic act in some of these other things that I talked about so that you can actually enhance your immune system now your gut has to get rid of all the toxins that it produces byproducts of your metabolism by circulating it to your liver so if your liver or if your gut is not functioning properly, you become toxic and your health suffers. So remember that it's not just about your small intestine it's not just about your stomach it's also about your liver and we really touched on liver detox a little bit in the last segment we're talking about women estrogen dominance and how we can help deliver process estrogen's better by getting what are called phase one compounds like lorella and activated charcoal in our diet and phase two detoxification compounds like antioxidants in our diet help our liver actually deal with those toxins so we're going to talk to you about some of the ways that you can actually help your digestive system that you can kind of kind of begin to move things along and caused digestion to occur and then we're also going to talk about fixing your digestive system if you've been doing things wrong for a long time and all those different systems that I just talked about from bacteria to your large intestine to your small intestine et cetera are actually broken so number one we want to prepare grains by soaking or using a sour leavening process such as using sour dough bread instead of regular bread to neutralize the difficult to digest components and the nutrient blockers you know we mentioned for example, in our first session today the book nourishing to drift tradition is and how I really like this is kind of like an initial textbook to teach you how to properly ferment and soak and sprout foods, but doing that two grains can really help legans long soak times or even cook times of leggings can really really help there are soaking time charts on the internet you can find pretty easily I mean even wikipedia has a soak time chart for common leg umes nuts seeds I've got one pus citic fit dot net, but it shows you how long you should soak something let's say you're going to make homicide home just how long would you soak something like a chickpea, for example to make it more adjustable twelve hours about twelve hours so you know it's just going out of your way if you buy bulk chick peas to make your own hamas, which is a great home recipe, you would say ok, you can use like glass mason jars a good rule of thumb is just the size of the being if his vigor you so get longer I love the bigger than being a long you soak it so fermentation of many types of tumors can help with digestion of things like potatoes, lacto fermentation of condiments and beverages to provide beneficial bacteria one of the books that I mentioned earlier rich food, poor food. This book actually goes into a bunch of there's a whole continent section in this book and they actually list some continent manufacturers now that are fermenting things like ketchups and relishes and salsas toe actually provide your body with beneficial bacteria for even things like condiments. And of course we talked about com boucha and can fear earlier today and how those type of foods can really help to heal the digestive tract or provide the digestive tract with good bacteria consumption of protein foods along with plenty of cholesterols and fats so we're actually giving our body what it needs to break down the proteins and help the digestive system have a proper lining. Can really help us. Well, so those air helpful use of gelatin rich bone broth. So gelatine brings food in contact with digestive juices and also sues the intestinal wall. Now, jesse makes bone broth. What would you say, honey? About every week, pretty easy to make bone broth. You go out and you get a chicken right, get a whole chicken carcass and walk us through how you would make bone broth at home. Actually, this is a pretty cool way, is you just get a whole chicken and you put it in your slow cooker. Really? All you need is water and salt. But if you want to add flavor, you can I anchor it's onion, celery, peppercorns, whatever. Um, it's a lot. Like making a chicken noodle soup on you. Cook it for about anywhere from six to eight hours, spending on the size of your chicken. Um, and then at the end of it, I like to shred the chicken and just have it around for like, salad toppers or sandwich fillers or enchilada filling and stuff like that, and then you have that already made, and then then you have your soup. And you let that cool in the fridge in and you can use that later on in the week or freeze it or whatever you like this you get to really great products out of super nourishing too and if you don't have time to go through all that you know I mentioned it you could buy things like college and and gelatin on the internet great lakes gelatin bernard jensen gelatin things like that you can use to add two smoothies like that kale smoothie that I made I could stir that gelatin or college and into something like the chunky kale smoothie after I make that and get some of those same type of bone broth healing compounds in something like a morning smoothie, cooking vegetables and even cooking some fruits help to neutralize some of the toxins and break down cell walls that's important to make sure that you do cook some of the vegetables that are more difficult to digest technically, even for something like like a kale smoothie like I made this morning if you really wanted to make that as digestible is possible and reduce some of what are called the ox awaits and kale or the ox lights, for example, if you're going to spinach in that recipe you would technically steam and cook that kale or that spinach a little bit before you make a smoothie like that that would be an ideal scenario I personally don't go out of my way to you that s o I'm technically not getting every win possible from that smoothie, but these are just examples of things that you can do know if my got were really damaged, I probably want to go out of my way to do that. Aging of meat aging of meat is not something that we see done too much the's days, but that initiate the breakdown of proteins when I talk about, like soaking liver and in lemon juice or milk that's another exam sample the way that you can break down proteins when you soak fish and lemon or lime juice, or you marinated meat that's also an example of a way that you can initiate the digestion of that mean, I mean that's what ceviche is is it's really just like cooking a meat through the use of acids or juices, and there are ways you can actually age meet as well. We're not really going to get to get into aging meat, but you can actually age and ferment meat and that's kind of ah that's kind of a traditional practice that we don't do too much these days, but that is one thing that you can do to make meet more digestible if you wanted to. And then soaking or lightly roasting nuts at a low temperature to remove a lot of the irritants in the toxins like we soak nuts and then dehydrate them to make flax seed crackers and this is something again that I see justin doing on a weekly basis you're stokes what is it? Pumpkin seeds, flaxseeds? What else is in there and sons embarrassing she and sunflower seeds and then kind of yeah, well, flaxseeds created gel, which is the binder of the cracker, and they spread it out and dehydrated and it's ducks together exactly, exactly and then just throw in the dehydrator super super easy recipe. I don't know if that recipes on our our top ten recipes, but there is if you were to do a search on the internet for just a flax seed crackers or jessica green filled flax seed crackers, I know there is there some videos of her out there making that particular flax seed cracker recipe so and of course there's the book that I just mentioned, the teachers you have to do a lot of this stuff. So we talked about fermentation earlier today, and the importance of consuming lots of fermented foods and fermentation is a biological process where sugars in a food are converted into cellular energy and lack tate and the lack tate feeds the good bacteria that flourish and whatever you're fermenting something in so this can increase the vitamin content of foods it can increase the enzyme production of foods some of the best sources we went over a few this morning like fear and sauerkraut and calm boucha we didn't talk about me so too much but miso soup the missile pace that you get in the asian section of a grocery store another really good example we do a lot of lacto fermentation of pickles, for example to cumbers from the garden that will pickle kimchi super easy to make with just shredded cabbage essentially and a little bit of the way that you can literally strain off of yogurt that you buy at the grocery store. Um again if you were to do a search on the internet for kimchi video there's a really good videos of jessa on youtube making kimchi on dh kimchi is another really good one um and then of course yogurt if you're getting like an organic full fat yogurt that's another really, really good way to work fermented foods into your diet but that's also really important when it comes your digestion and then of course, saturated fats I talked about cholesterols, but certain saturated fats actually have anti microbial properties in your stomach one of those is coconut oil another one is grass fed butter two really really good ways to protect your stomach to important things tohave in your diet to help aid with digestion coconut oil is antiviral especially if you happen to be someone who has candida on a lot of times if you struggle with on inability to lose weight with sugar cravings with things like that you usually can have like a candied a or a yeast or a fungus infection whether you're a guy or a girl coconut oil can help with that as can oil of oregano it's in a lot of indian doctors prescribe coconut oil as a dietary supplement to aid dieting yeah exactly there's even a concept of oil swishing where you actually switch oil around in your mouth to actually kill a lot of bacteria in your gums and around your teeth grass fed organic butter also has some really good anti microbial fatty acids in it that's one of the reasons you know why we why we see things like bulletproof coffee popping up in health sectors because it contains some of those components of coconut oil and some of those components of grass fed butter kind of combined with coffee and you know it's a great kind of digestive tonic that you can drink both of those could help to heal the lining of the gut coffee can be a stomach irritants, so sometimes you might not want to combine those things with coffee and just kind depends on you and how your gut feels when you drink something like that but two to three tablespoons of either butter or coconut oil, or both per day really important for digestive health saturated fats similar to cholesterol, they constitute at least fifty percent of your cell membranes, along with cholesterol to give yourself stiffness and integrity here's some interesting facts about saturated fats for calcium to be effectively incorporated into your bone structure, you actually need adequate saturated fat, so a diet that's high in calcium and low in saturated fats is similar to a diet that's high in calcium and lohan, magnesium or low in vitamin k or low on vitamin a, so you really leave a lot on the table in terms of calcium inc. When you're not getting saturated fats in saturated fact, protect your liver from alcohol and talks in such as tylenol omega three fatty acids, which we've talked about is a potent anti inflammatory as a component of something like fish oil, those air better absorbed when you have saturated fats like butter and dairy fats and things of that nature in your diet, saturated fats or the preferred fuel for the heart. Now, this is something that I didn't mention when I was talking about key tones, but not only are key tones used as a fuel source for your brain, but they're also used as a good fuel source for your diaphragm and for your heart. And saturated fats place to moral role as well and then there's zero evidence of course like I mentioned earlier that saturated fats cause heart disease especially if it's in the absence of like high sugar or high starch intake so just some interesting things to consider when we talk about saturated fat now we talked a little bit about bone broth already and how to make bone broth and the nutritive properties of something like gelatin. One thing I wanted to point out here is that bone broth also includes some really highly absorbable mineral lt's so not just kills him but also like phosphorus and silica and magnesium get a lot of soul for you get trace minerals so I understand that like, for example, I talked about maybe doing like a shot of trace liquid minerals in the morning if you've instead decided you're going to start making bone broth on a regular basis, you're just doing like a cup of bone broth on a daily basis that could take the place of a mineral source like that it's a very, very complete food. So we talked quite a bit about how to make bone broth already, so I'll skip over that section now in terms of carbohydrates, we've talked a little bit about proteins about fats as faras carbohydrates some of things that you want to avoid when it comes to carbohydrates. If you tend to get digestive issues one thing is di sacha rides a lot of people don't produce the enzymes necessary to break down by sacha rides so they can kind of remain undigested and putrid fire ferment in your digestive tract now an example of a dye sacha ride would be milk sugar another example would be sucrose if you're using a digestive enzyme, sometimes you can mitigate some of these issues, but if you deal with bloating and gas and that tends to bug you sometimes not consuming die sack arise can help out quite a bit paulie sacha rides or another thing that could be hard for a lot of people to break down and the biggest number one source of polly sack arise would be like bread like from unsocial unscripted un sour eleven grains so that's another area where if you want optimal digestive function you can cut bread or cut some of these complex polly sack ride based grains out of the diet that can help out quite a bit fight eight's fight eight's can actually robbed the body of minerals like calcium and iron and zinc fight eights or something that you're going to find especially in soy common for sources of soy like soy milk and tofu fermented forms of soy like me so temp a natto things of that nature those actually don't contain the same amounts of fight a tso's have actually been inhibited by the fermentation process but fight eights are also found in wheat, barley, oats and rye. Another thing you want to be careful with this high fructose corn syrup it's not a mano sacha ride, but it contains sucrose and if you look at the label of just about anything these days that you purchased that suite at the grocery store, you've got a pretty big chance that it has high fructose corn syrup in it, so that could be another big, big issue with digestion with folks now finally, before we get into into kind of geeking out on digestive supplements and healing your gut fiber, I'm asked a lot of times about how much fiber you should take in and I actually at a podcast gas name constancy constantine monastir ski on my on my podcast he is from the website fiber menace dot or ge and he's written a really interesting book on fiber that shows that in most cases evidence is pretty mixed on whether high fiber intake actually does indeed reduce the risk of heart disease and cancer. As you've learned, humans have a smaller colon and a smaller stomach than a lot of other herbivores and ruminants, and we can deal with fiber a lot less than many other animals fiber can irritate inflammation in your ballot can irritate crone's disease and colitis aa lot of times, people who are eating high fiber and take are getting it from lots of fruits and grains and legumes, and that can really cause issues in the digestive tract mohr fiber is not necessarily better now, nutrient dense animal foods contain concentrated nutrients, meaning that if you consume meat, you're actually getting a lot of those same nutrients that you'd get if you ready, tons and tons of kale and spinach and asparagus, broccoli and all these other nutrient dense vegetables because you're getting a lot of those nutrients concentrated in the animal meat itself. So in many cases, if you're eating meat, you don't need to eat quite as many of those fibers as well. Twenty five to forty grams per day is what I shoot for in terms of fiber and take I don't recommend that you exceed forty grams, not a big a friend of metamucil on these really, really high fiber type of supplements, and just to give you an example on apple has like five grams of fiber needs and nuts and seeds have three to five grams of fiber vegetables to ten grams of fiber. So if you have constipation, actually just did a podcast two days ago on constipation. Ben greenfield, fitness dot com with a guy named troy casey and we talked about some of our favorite ways to get rid of constipation.

Class Description

Professional athletes and elite exercisers may be able to train full-time, but what about those of us who want a better body or to achieve amazing feats of physical performance but have busy lives and jam-packed schedules? Athlete and author Ben Greenfield will arm you with the tools, strategies, and systems you need to look, feel, and perform at your peak physical and mental capacity, without spending your entire day exercising or dieting.

In this course, Ben covers topics such as how to avoid injury, imbalances, or overtraining, how to address crucial elements that most exercise enthusiasts overlook, and how to quickly develop natural, ancestral strength, balance, mobility and physical function. You’ll learn how to customize your daily nutrition and workout fueling protocols so that you can get adequate calories without destroying your metabolism or expanding your waistline. From your gut-brain connection to mind-hacking tactics to sensory system enhancement, Ben will show you the crucial role the nervous system plays in fitness, and will reveal strategies for being mentally and physically prepared for any challenge life may throw at you.

Whether you want to run a marathon, do an Ironman triathlon, complete an adventure race, launch into Crossfit, are a dedicated gym junkie, or just want to shed fat fast and get rid of fatigue, this course will equip you to feel your best and perform at your peak capacity.

Jeff

Ben delivered an exceptional three-day seminar at creativeLIVE that I was lucky enough to attend. His expertise in all facets of health &amp; wellness was on full-display -- and his presentation was clearly articulated &amp; engaging
He was friendly and responsive to feedback and gave actionable recommendations which are already paying dividends in my life -- especially in the areas of energy, mental clarity &amp; sleep quality
I strongly recommend Ben -- he walks the walk &amp; talks the talk -- genuinely cares about helping other people and possesses a real gift to teach &amp; inspire

a Creativelive Student

This is one of the best courses I have ever seen! So much value for money and so many amazing bits of information jam packed in. What a brilliant guy! Geeky information presented in a down to earth way. I can not recommend this course enough. I don't think I have ever been bothered to write a review for anything (EVER) but this was SO good I had to share. Well done Ben and thank you Creative Live!

Valentine

Ben Greenfield has a lot of information, best course I have taken in regards to Nutrition and Fitness. There is a lot of knowledge and their a great couple and both have a lot of information to offer, I even like the lame jokes that he makes. Very nice and knowledgable couple.